The human resource for health (HRH) committee of Kenya Healthcare Federation (KHF) held it’s first quarterly committee meeting on 14th March 2019, at KHF offices, to set the 2019 focus areas. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Kennedy Auma, Committee Chair. The director representative for the committee, Dr. Elizabeth Wala, called upon the committee members to be meeting on a bi-monthly basis so as to ensure the focus areas are achieved. There was a unanimous agreement by the committee that there is need to address HRH issues proactively.
The first focus area for the committee in 2019 will be the establishment of a framework with the Ministry of Health (MOH) for the three specialized cadres: Community Health Volunteers (CHV), Health Record Information Officers (HRIOs) and Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT). The second focus area is the management and development of the HRH. This focus area will be implemented through stakeholder engagement through professional associations and unions, collection of data on the distribution of HRH in both public and private sector, performance management, innovative ways to overcome HRH gaps and strong leadership and governance structures. The third focus area will be on specialized cadres specifically recognition, regulation and establishment of a framework for their work with the MOH thereby enabling referral processes and availability of equipment to enable their work. Some examples of specialized cadres are Physiotherapy, Occupational Health, Oral health, specialized nurses and other medical specialties available in the diaspora.
The committee noted that HRH is a key pillar in Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the Health Act 2017 therefore it is important to understand the legal framework therein and to monitor the implementation of the recommendations. From the three focus areas, three committees were formed to concentrate on their allocated focus areas to ensure that the committee achieves all focus areas by the close of the year.